SDPI Research and News Bulletin

Women Sufis of the Bhakti Movement

Ahmed Salim
salim@sdpi.org

If the hatred between India and Pakistan is viewed in gender perspective, then all the conflicts, including Kashmir, seem to be overshadowed by attempts to dominate each other, which stem from the concept of “mardangi”. This is evident in anthems, especially those connected with wars. For example, the war anthem composed by Dr Rashid Anwar during 1965 war runs:
Maharaj eh khed talwar di Ae
Jang khed nahin hondi zananian di
However, women reformers, especially those connected with Bhakti movement, deeply affected the social patterns, widening the mental horizon of people and establishing greater tolerance and inter-communal harmony.
Indian society being largely patriarchal, the position of women has for long been regarded as inferior. Significantly, the Bhakti movement saw the emergence of women saints on an unprecedented scale. The spiritual path helped a woman to break out of stereotypes, the chains of tradition, orthodoxy and convention which sought to control her sexuality.
As a saint, she could transcend the normally accepted limits and seek God even as a naked saint – Lalla and Akka Mahadevi – or skeletal being – Karaikkal Ammaiyar.
The women saints in medieval Indian society emerged in an atmosphere of discrimination and suppression, but blossomed into thinkers, scholars and spiritually advanced and emancipated beings. Their lives and works constitute the supreme forms of self-expression.
Sharply breaking away from the traditional role assigned to a woman as wife, daughter or mother, the women saints consciously or unconsciously departed from the established norms of social behaviour and spurned the limitations imposed on them by their families and society. Not only did their compositions carry the overtones of protest; their emergence was in itself a social revolt.
Women saints can be classified into a few broad categories on the basis of their choice of spiritual path and interaction with the traditional society. If at one end of the spectrum were rebels like Meera and Akka Mahadevi, at the other end were pious and chaste housewives, the ideals of womanhood like Vasukiyar, the wife of Tiruvalluvar, Gangambika and Nagalochane, Basava's wives, Vishnupriya, wife of Chaitanya, and Bahinabai.
To the latter category belonged Tilakavatiyar who elevated karpu or chastity to such a height that she began to live as a widow when Kalaippagaiyar, to whom she had been betrothed, died in battle. In between these two ends of the spectrum are those women saints who gave up their home and conventional life only when they were driven to it and were left with no other option. The best examples are Karaikkal Ammaiyar, Lalla Arfa and Rupa Bhavani.
Lalla Arfa and Meera were both reluctant brides. Lalla was married to a Brahman at the age of 12, and Meera married Prince Bhoj Raj of Mewar. Both walked out of their homes mainly because of domestic ill treatment, which was occasionally combined with unnatural husband-wife relationship and the fear engendered in the husband by the wife's unconsciously manifested supernatural powers. Lalla believed that her husband was actually her son in a previous birth.

Several women saints looked upon the omnipotent as their husband. To this category belong Meera, Akka Mahadevi, Andal and NangaPennu apart from Muktabai, Muktabai, Janabai and Goggave. Significantly, while the "bride of the Lord concept" came naturally to women saints, it was not uncommon among the male saints of the Bhakti movement to see the jivatman (individual soul) and paramatman (supreme soul) relationship as that of a husband and wife. Tirumangai Alvar, a male saint, preferred to assume femininity and looked upon Krishna as his bridegroom. Total transcendence of normally regarded feminine virtues of beauty, modesty and gentleness is another feature of the Bhakti movement. Several women saints showed complete freedom from inhibitions and flagrantly defied all notions of women's sexuality. With no consciousness even of body, Akka Mahadevi went naked with her body covered only by her long hair. Meera flouted social conventions in her own way. Though a Rajput queen who should have strictly observed purdah, she publicly danced with anklets on her feet in the motley company of devotees and sang in abandon: pad ghunghroo bandh meera nachi re (Meera dances with anklets on the feet).

Despite limitations and constraints of the social milieu, most women saints contributed significantly to the religious and social developments of the period.
Rigors of caste did not weigh heavily on most women saints. Even Bahinabai, a Brahman and scrupulous observer of social norms, accepted low caste Tukaram as her guru. Meera, belonging to a princely Rajput family, found in untouchable Raidas her ideal guru. Neither of them, however, made any conscious effort to critically examine or overturn the existing social order. In many cases the overtones of protest are to be found not so much in the role perceptions of women saints as in the very fact of their emergence.

Several women saints, however, provide more concrete examples of the rejection of the existing social structure and behavioural modes. Akka Mahadevi, for example, asserted:
O brothers, why do you talk to me
Who has given up her caste and sex
Having united with Chenna Mallikarjuna.
Lalla, a disciple of priest Srikanta and the companion of such Muslim dervishes as Sayyid Ali Hamadani and Sayyid Husain Samnani, boldly declared in her vak:
"The idol is but stone, the temple is but stone."
It is interesting that like Kabir, Hindus and Muslims now revere Lalla equally. In fact, Muslim chroniclers like Pir Ghulam Hasan call her Lalla Arifa and a rabia (saint).